April 18, 2007

THE DECLINE OF WESTERN SNIFFILIZATION

After being sick for almost an entire week, the Peanut is back to her normal, boisterous self.

I, on the other hand, feel like death warmed over. A bad case of the flu and the onset of allergy season have served to create a perfect storm of incapacity.
Unfortunately, I took two days off from work in the past week to care
for my ailing daughter so now I'm forced to suck it up and suffer through the pain.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those whiny men who snivel and whimper whenever they get sick. However, when it comes to the flu and allergies, I'm not the toughest guy on the planet. Especially not in comparison to my ancestors.

See, I am the modern descendent of a tough farming family who, for
thousands of years, tended the fields in Korea with nothing more than a
toothpick and a mangy dog.

My father has often regaled us with stories of living for days off
nothing but tree roots and raw eggs. When he was young, his parents told him school was no longer necessary because he was going to live the rest of his life as a farmer. Whenever he protested, his parents beat him. One day, he decided to run away and never looked back. Thus he began his life as a street urchin. Many nights, he
would often sleep outside in the fields with his cousin. The two of them would
huddle together as snow fell all around them. To this day, the man is strong as an ox and as tough as nails.

Me? I ain't that tough. However, I DO know that I've got a high
threshold for pain. Once, when I got an incredibly bad case of tennis elbow, I was STILL able to put on my v-neck sweater and pull the top down on my convertible. That's right, motherfuckers! By myself!

Ok, so I'm not that tough.

I only eat raw eggs when they're on top of my steak
tartare. I get sick at least 4-5 times every year. And the day that I
sleep in the fields will be the same day that Frette comes out with a
10,000-thread count sleeping bag made out of a goose's pubic fur.

The realization that I have personally destroyed the survival
instincts of my Korean ancestors in less than a single generation is not lost
on me. As I was telling my personal food taster the other night, I can't help it. Like Jay-Z, I'm just a "product of my environment."

The most symbolic aspect of my lack of toughness is the fact that I
am the only member of my family who gets allergies. I never had them
growing up but, over the past 5 years, I've become a congested and
sniffling mess. My nose drips like Robert Downey, Jr. at a house party
with Kate Moss.

And as much as the flu is beating me into submission, it's really the allergies that are kicking my ass. According to my doctor, I'm pretty much allergic to EVERYTHING: mites, mold, pollen, trees, grass, cat dander and horses. It is the running family joke that a man who comes from a long line of farmers is allergic to trees and grass.

Are there any medical professionals out there? Does anyone know what would happen if I mixed Scotch, TheraFlu, Allegra-D, Nasacort, Emergen-C, Airborne, chicken noodle soup, and ginseng tea all together?

"Are there any medical professionals out there? Does anyone know what would happen if I mixed Scotch, TheraFlu, Allegra-D, Nasacort, Emergen-C, Airborne, chicken noodle soup, and ginseng tea all together?"

You need those Hockey's Little Helpers - Sudafed. Even if they don't clear the congestion, at least you will be able to clean the house, make the dinner, mow the lawn, and land a few dirty hits on the other parents in the park.

I love men. I detest male bashing. If a woman tells me a joke or sends me an email with a dumb man story I will speak up and let them know I don't appreciate such things, cause again I think men are the best. But there is one thing I have noted. Men are the biggest babies on the face of the earth when they are sick. A woman will still manage to do, at the very least, a load of laundry if she is home sick. A man however will lay on the couch watching his favorite tv shows or sit and surf the internet and will then whimper a little until someone (usually a woman) brings him his blankie and chicken noodle soup.
So, have you done any laundry yet?

You 'n' me both, my friend! And I thought it was the dismal Seattle spring -- if one can call MORE clouds and MORE gray skies "spring"! Yesterday all I could do was whine and kvetch and watch "Dancing with the Stars."

Glad Peanut's better. Really, I can handle you being all goopy and sad (suck it UP, dudde!), but when you said that SHE was acting like a sullen teenager... well, as the mom of FOUR of those, you can imagine that I began to weep...

Bless you. Allergies are a circle of hell reserved for us lucky few. I am allergic to everything. AND I'm pregnant, so I can't take anything. No a thing. No drugs. Imagine my hell that is pollen season.

Dude, don't tell me about being soft and wimpy. The last time we moved, my mother practically balanced my dining room table on her head, grabbed all four chairs and moved them down my three flights of stairs while I moved a box of papers and whined about a paper cut.

Hope you're feeling better, all I have to offer for a remedy is tigerbalm under the nose.

Add some local honey to that mix. It'll sweeten it up, and might even help.

I did shots (allergy, not scotch) for awhile - they did help. It was the test that killed me. Every Single Thing they injected into my forearm reacted. I wanted to chew it off, and it was daylight and I wasn't waking up next to something horrible.

I didn't read all the other comments, but I'm passing info to you that was given to me. If you can somehow get honey, and by that I do not mean in a bear-shaped jar at the supermarket, but honey that has been made within 50 miles of where you live, take/eat a spoonful every day during allergy season. This helps build your immunity without making you feel the symptoms.

I'm not familiar with NYC, but I would venture that there are some incredible Markets (Farmer's Markets, maybe? I dunno. I'm from BFE). But the key is getting "local" honey.

The combination he's described is now commonly referred to as the "Anna Nicole Daily Cocktail" (ANDC), not to be confused with the "Anna Nicole Special Occasion Cocktail" (ANSOC), whereby you add at least two anti-depressants and four narcotics to the ANDC or the "Anna Nicole Prenatal Cocktail," which is the ANSOC with the addition of a prenatal vitamin and is taken with orange juice [and vodka].

Ahh...the dreaded cycle of death (as we call it at our house) when parents and kids rotate being sick for weeks on end. I think someone in our house was sick for the entire winter. Just when one person would recover, another one would get sick. With 6 of us under one roof, that can be pure torture!

While the doctor's I travel amongst these days can dope you up with all sorts of varied drugs, none of them address the allergy beast. However, I was put on Singulair for asthma several years ago, and as an added bonus it completely eradicated the 4-8 months out of the year I sneezed, wheezed and coughed due to allergies. Even though the idea of a daily dose for the rest of my days is a bit of a downer, I happily do it so I can skip through the fields and rub my face in the back of a cat.

No help on the allergies -- I outgrew mine by age 40, so there's still hope for you -- but 2 grams (yes, that is 2000 milligrams!) of vitamin C a day will help with the catchy-infectious thingies. It's not a coincidence that Linus Pauling hit on that dosage. Yeah, I know that science hasn't been able to duplicate his findings but for me personally, the vitamin C thing really, really works.

I am so glad to see that your amazing wit is unaffected by your being sick. Dang, that's a whole lotta drugs! You should be feeling like Superman soon. Claritin-D has always made me perk up when my colds or allergies get out of control. Watch it with the Airborne if you haven't taken it before, though. I took it before working in the nursery two weeks ago b/c I was sick of the rugrats sharing their viruses with me. I broke out in hives, swelled up, and itched like heck for 3 days. How's that for irony?

try euphrasia for your allergies. it's a homeopathic remedy for hay fever. it's the only thing that works for me (and trust me, i've tried them all). you can find euphrasia at your local health foods store / vitamin shop. buy the euphrasia in sublingual tablet form. it's the most effective.

Don't you think you should ask MetroBro about this? Cause I'm all, hey, you know what you can handle, dude. Me, I can't take anything more than my patented prescription of 1.5 pots of tea, 1 litre of chicken noodle soup, and as much Drambuie as it takes to burn the germs out of your throat on its way down. Repeat twice daily for two or three days or until you get so waterlogged and sick of chicken soup, you're ready to go back to work just to escape it.